Pew Study Finds 56% of Americans Now Own Smartphones

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released the results of a study finding a majority of American adults (56 percent) now own smartphones. 35 percent have “dumb” phones (mobile phones that aren’t smartphones), and 9 percent don’t own a mobile phone at all.

For the first time since the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project began systematically tracking smartphone adoption, a majority of Americans now own a smartphone of some kind. Our definition of a smartphone owner includes anyone who says “yes” to one—or both—of the following questions:

55% of cell phone owners say that their phone is a smartphone.

58% of cell phone owners say that their phone operates on a smartphone platform common to the U.S. market.

The research also found that income correlates with smartphone ownership, with wealthier Americans having a higher adoption rate. But “younger adults—regardless of income level—are very likely to be smartphone owners.” Go to any college campus and look at the sea of crack screened devices in every hand, and this is pretty obvious.

Android use is on the rise, now taking 28 percent of all mobile phone users in America, with iPhone users at 25 percent and BlackBerry users dwindling to 4 percent, according to the Pew study.

Probably not a surprise, given the higher price, but iPhone users trend toward higher income brackets than Android users.

The survey was conducted through telephone interviews of over 2,200 adults on both land lines and cellphones. The interviews were conducted in English and Spanish.

The graph below shows the climb in smartphone ownership over the last few years. Click the source link to see the full findings of the study.